I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist

by Christina Stead

  Said Emily, writing in her Journal of Days, ‘Who would have foreseen it, for those two heavies, Pious Jay and Noble God? But then Suzanne has taught me never to bet on loyalty. We don’t know. To think of them, that Jay and Godfrey are responsible at bottom for our being here, in the mess we are and in the unhappiness we are.’

  The girl Frankie came and was installed, a lively, very short, broad-faced girl, hefty who was one of the ‘campus leaders’ in a students’ revolt and was interested in scapegoat and other unhappy, misfit children. She talked earnestly at breakfast in the latest psychological jargon and otherwise was a gay, sinless puppy, spoiled by a brilliant father and a rich mother, very serious about herself.

  ‘She leads Christy by the nose,’ said Emily the first morning to Suzanne. ‘We don’t know people. I never thought he was so spineless.’

  Suzanne laughed, ‘You are just like all mothers and mothers-in-law.’

  Emily laughed, ‘Emily Wilkes in “The Mother-in-Law”; that’s a good idea.’

  She prodded the unwilling couple to fulfill her programme. Christy had had enough of the house; Frankie was going back all too soon to the campus rituals of an American college, and had better have European culture forced on her.

  ‘It’s the only way to do it at your age, Frankie. Ah, me! I know only too well. Get Fernande to give you your lunches and come along.’

  How she heckled and high-hatted and harassed Frankie! Frankie said the Louvre was ‘not functional.’

  ‘What an abysmally stupid opinion, Frankie, if it is an opinion. I don’t call it an opinion. It is like a hee-haw from a hippo munching leaves, all muffled by the saliva and sap but no brain-juice in it. Don’t interrupt Christy! Frankie must learn something. Why is she here? Why don’t you like the cheese, Frankie? You surely don’t want to live all your life on grocer’s cheese? Don’t you want to learn things? Heigh-ho! Les Americains. Sit up straight Frankie, you’re getting round shoulders; you’re overweight as it is. Well, I am. But I need it, this mountain of fat is a mountain of energy. You do nothing. Don’t tell me sitting in an armchair at a desk interviewing the ragged and destitute of the mind, the poor in soul, social alley-cats, the boys kicked by their fathers and the girls half burned to death by their mothers, do you mean to say you, Frankie, who know nothing, you poor, ignorant, little sod, are going to do something for them, to heal them; when their misery and hurt comes from society and you, with your few campus slogans and your total, abysmal ignorance of Europe and of all society that went before—what can you analyse? What do you know? Don’t give me that—that, social-worker talk. What do you know? Nothing, nothing! Don’t interrupt, Christy. This ignorant girl that I would kick to the bottom of the class, she wouldn’t get ten per cent from me, she’s going into business righting the wrongs of American society with her fat-jawed, fat-eyed, fat-breasted, fat-waisted, fat-legged, fat-footed intuition and Freudian jargon. Shut up, Christy! I know America and she doesn’t. She’s an ignorant, selfish,’ vain, little maggot. Sit up, Frankie. You sit opposite me and I can see all the revolting arrogance in your fat little eyes. You’re a nobody.’

  The first few mornings she had insisted upon Frankie Wilson sitting in with herself, Christy, Suzanne at the French lessons. She had soon herself been ungovernable, exhibiting Frankie, whenever she spoke; and later to Christy calling her a dull little campus sex-maniac, only going into politics to sleep with boys, so stupid, so venal, ‘Here you see it, where different values reign! What a success for a dumb little animal like that to marry an artist, you, Christy and a rich man, a very rich man. The American dream! We’ll sweep these sweepings off our doorstep, Christy! What is she but a shipboard acquaintance?’

  To her astonishment, Suzanne had taken Frankie’s part. ‘She is an amiable child, quite innocent, with orthodox phrases from the schoolroom, but quite sincere, a good companion for Christy. He could do much worse. She is just a schoolgirl. You could do a lot with that girl.’

  She insisted also on her taking the Latin lesson with Christy and herself, under the teaching of Monsieur Jean-Claude.

  ‘Now, Monsieur Jean-Claude, I want Frankie and then Christy to tell you what they know about Cicero before we start. Learning has to have a foundation. Frankie, please start.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about Cicero.’

  ‘Go on, go on, you must know something. Haven’t you even heard of Cicero?’

  ‘Yes. He was a Roman; he wrote in Latin.’

  ‘And he’s in Shakespeare; but you never read Shakespeare, did you?’

  ‘Where is he in Shakespeare?’ enquired Jean-Claude.

  ‘In the play of Julius Caesar. Now Christy tell us what you know of Cicero. You see, Monsieur Jean-Claude, Christy’s uncle is a scholar, a Latin scholar, and it is essential, completely essential that Christy should also be a Latin scholar. Christy, now, Cicero attacked misgovernment, he was an enemy of tyranny, of dictatorship. The republicans of the French Revolution were young people who were fired by their reading of Cicero at school and from him got their passion for freedom. Like you, Christy. That is why, Monsieur Jean-Claude, it is also necessary for Christy to be soaked in Cicero. Christy’s a young communist; he must know what his spiritual ancestors said, those who attacked the enemies of freedom. Now, Frankie, what do you know about it? Nothing! But you say you led a movement for freedom on campus. But how can you, if you are just amusing yourself, looking for kudos? If you’re serious you’ll try to find out what a great liberator and lover of freedom like Cicero said. You won’t just wave a few flags, repeat a few slogans and get married and sit back fat and cosy as a hedgehog in winter, thinking you have done your bit. For that’s what you will do. I can see. You are just a talker and a poor talker at that. So I tell you to listen, Frankie and find out from Christy and Monsieur Jean-Claude and myself what a great fighter for freedom was like.’

  Monsieur Jean-Claude said, ‘As a matter of record and since you are interested in scholarly views of Marcus Tullius, I should like to tell our two young friends that there is a well-known book by a scholar, Monsieur Jérome Carcopino, published in 1938, called Secrets of Cicero’s Correspondence. We can, if you like, go through the letters of Cicero with this commentary in mind. For instance, Monsieur Carcopino says that in these letters, “The politician is shown here so odious that his misfortunes come as the punishment of unpardonable faults into which he was plunged by the mistakes of a mind too self-centred to be farsighted and the false moves of a will too weak to overcome the crises in which his generation struggled.”

  ‘He bought a sumptuous private hotel on the Palatine, to be near the powerful whose cases he now wished to take. By this, he tells Atticus, he satisfied his private vanity and increased his prestige. Please take notes and we will refer to the letters. To Atticus: ad aliquam dignitatem pervenire … 1. 13, 5—26 Jan., 61 BC. He borrows from women, from Julius Caesar. He was a money-lender. He lent to well-placed and famous men but he preferred loans to the reckless sons of rich men. His toughness in exacting his money back and the high percentage is excused by him, by his need for money, urgent bills and a pack of creditors always after him.

  ‘After his famous consulate, he jokes (so that he may not weep) about his debts: “Know that I am now so burdened with debts that I should like to enter a conspiracy if anyone would take me in.” Ad. Fam. V.6.

  ‘In 45 BC he is reduced to getting money from women, and large sums were paid. He does not deny this.

  ‘Brother Quintus, to simplify things, had allowed Marcus Tullius to receive in Rome indemnities from the Treasury Public fixed by the senate. He received them but never transmitted them. He writes: “I see today that I am a wretch. I understand of what criminal act I have rendered myself guilty when I dissipated in mad expenditures the sums I received from the treasury in your name.” Note, Christy, “Qua in re ipsa video miser et sentio quid sceleris ad miserium … etc.” He wrote this from exile, brought once more face to face with his ruin. He tried to rob his close friend Atticus t
o whom so many of the letters are written.

  ‘How did he have such money troubles with his property fees and bank accounts? He could not dispense with senseless luxury. He says to Atticus, “Don’t bother about my money affairs as I don’t care about it; think only of what I desire.”’

  At this Emily clapped her hands and cried, ‘Oh, how wonderful, how right he was! Why, everything was there for him to take, it was the way of the age, wasn’t it? He understood his age! He was the leading man of his age! But he was right. He was respected for that. Do you want him to live in an attic with Atticus?

  ‘But Monsieur Jean-Claude and children,’ she said, thumping on the table with her fist, ‘yes, he did have a weakness; it was to regret it, to apologize, instead of taking what he needed, what everyone had, what everyone thought practical, and keeping it without apology. Wasn’t it a time of conquest, when revenues were pouring in from all the backward, low-browed peasants, the ignorant, stupid tribes without arts or sciences or political knowledge, that the Romans conquered? And why should you conquer without getting tribute? Didn’t they all have triumphs in Rome showing what they had taken from the backward peoples, the rough barbarian gold and jewels and stuffs? And wasn’t it their right? They went out there and put order into the provinces, they taught them how to grow crops and build houses. There they were dressed in a rag or a loincloth or a bit of bark if they dressed at all, living on roots and painting themselves blue, and the Romans came at the height of their civilization, with their arts and sciences, their building and road-making and they taught them everything. They made the soil produce and it was natural for them to take the fruits; there was plenty because of the superior methods of agriculture. They brought civilization all over Europe, where before there had only been yelling, ignorant barbarians living in forests, building rafts and killing each other in stupid little forays. The Romans came and civilized the land and the land brought out luxury and corn. It was coming to them. Why was he ashamed? Was there anyone who did not do the same? It was because he was not an aristocrat, for aristocrats never are sorry or ashamed, they know the rules of conquest and of living better than your neighbour, but because he was at heart a mild, good-natured middle-class man. He was kind to his wife and he adored his daughter. Oh, poor Cicero; and in the end, brought to an unfortunate end, to shame, with all his kindness to his family and all the letters he wrote to his friends, showing such devotion, and his magnificent, passionate oratory defending in the courts, so that he was thought sublime, the greatest orator of Rome. Think of it! And he apologizes, he is ashamed because he lives as well as the next man. What are debts in a society where debts are an accepted thing? They are not a shame, they are a means of living. I despise those who are afraid of debts. It only shows what a mild nature he had, too mild, more milky than kind, that he was afraid; yes, it showed his lower-class origin. He would have been happier and done better and been more respected if he had told them to go hang themselves with his IOU’s round their necks! Let us be realists and not schoolmasters who know nothing of the world, Monsieur Jean-Claude. I want my children to be realists in an age just as difficult and full of crises as Cicero’s. I don’t want you putting into Christy’s head these little middle-class, scholarly ideas. Christy belongs to patrician society, he is a patrician and he must not learn the mawkish, ignoble, sheepish, humble, oh so humble and petty comments of a mean little bookworm. Christy must be trained for his class and his position; that is why he is here. Christy will never associate with anyone who thinks like that. Oh, I hate and despise what is modest forelock-pulling, and demeaning. Monsieur Jean-Claude, remember that you are teaching an aristocrat, a scion, a patrician; and let us look at things from that point of view. Cicero was quite right in everything he did; why should he abase himself, get down in the dust, when no one else did? I expect it was just artist’s temperament. He must have been very tired at times; and then you get the moods of subjection and self-abasement. He had to work for his money and work damn hard. That is why he felt abasement; it was fatigue. What a wonderful man he was! Christy, I want you to think about this wonderful man, the greatest, sublime genius of prose in ancient Rome who, in spite of all his worries, was so tender and good to his friends, such a good father and anxious husband, always worrying about whether he had done his duty to his loved ones. And think, Christy, that that is the duty of those in public honour, to have these doubts and these worries but never to show them. That was where he was wrong—to show them. See how now after two thousand years nearly we are picking on him like crows pecking an old rag because he was so tender, good and honest that he worried about his debts! That is something we must never do. If we contract debts it is because we have credit and if we have credit it is that we have earned it by our labour, our position, our name. When credit has been given to us we do not owe the money back. Remember that Christy. Not that you will ever owe a penny. But me, ah me—but if you like, Frankie, you can remember that Cicero worried about his debts and his spending for that is middle-class and that is the best they can do, as they nose their way through their miserable mean world. And that is the world you live in, Frankie, you are going to live in, you will never get out of it—you have no signs on you that you will ever rise out of the middle-class swamp and sump you were born in, so you may as well begin to worry right now about the debts no one will allow you and the luxury you will never have. That is for you, those lessons are for you, for the frumpish world of the dumb, down—dreary middle-class. Oh, what a middle class man must be this dreary little scholar, if you can call him that, who wrote this bitter and ignorant attack on Cicero; such a wretched little mental pauper should never be allowed into the forum of scholarship to spit at his betters. Oh, I despise him. You went astray, Jean-Claude. I don’t like this way of teaching. Let us give honour where honour is due and let us be men of the world here, not the base, cowardly, timid gentry who are afraid to have a debt. Don’t nations have debts? Could they get along without debts? Don’t cities and provinces and villages and hamlets have debts? And isn’t it a sign of their standing when at last they can contract a debt; and the better the standing the greater the public market in which they can contract their debts, until nations have debts on an international level. And is that a shame and disgrace? Don’t let us bandy these words like housewives. If you have never been in business, then debt seems a shame; but banks are there for debts, not for savings; business could not go ahead if everyone paid cash—no, they want you to contract debts. True, Cicero lived in an old-world setting where big business was unknown but still he shows his humble origins, I think. And I am very sorry he had that headache. His wife, instead of divorcing, should have said to him, It doesn’t matter; it belongs to the rank you have achieved, I know. And instead of having to marry his daughter for money, his daughter whom he so dearly loved, his own child, this charming little girl whom he adored, he could have been free of this load on his conscience. Oh, dear, dear me, poor Cicero!’

  Emily wiped her eyes. She sighed.

  ‘Well, Monsieur Jean-Claude, let us have no more of this little fungus-grown pedant, this petty little jealous dominie. Let us think of the greatness of great men.’

  The tour of Paris lasted two days only, when Frankie, silent, sullen, left for her little room in her cheap hotel. Emily went to the hotel with her, coaxed Mike the brother and insisted upon paying the hotel bill. When Emily herself had seen the girl to the hotel, she returned haughtily to Christy and said, ‘And now Christy that you have been with this dumb Dora two days you can see the sort of necking companion you got hold of.’

  Christy protested that she was not a necking companion; and during these few days, at any rate, she had not been.

  ‘Then why does she call you “darling Christy” and write you that slush? Oh, Christy, I can’t trust you out of my sight. You promised me so many things and you’re just a little liar. You have disappointed Mother, Christy.’

  Seven days later, when Frankie had left the capital, Emily allowe
d Christy to move over the Suzanne’s apartment in the Park Montouris.

  To him, Emily, who was now very lonely, wrote a letter and he answered:

  ‘Dear Emily, not Mother,

  Yes, yes, yes, I am a wretch, I know it. I have always been that, I know. And now when I stop and throw a glance backwards on the snows of yesterday, I know more, I am a liar and with something of the cheat in me. I have always been that, I think. You should never have believed in my grand promises. There’s a song going about here now which is very popular and which expresses it, “You should never have believed me when I said I loved you for I always was a liar.” Well this song is for me. But in spite of that, I’m very fond of myself; and of you too. Please love me in spite of my faults. For, in fact, he or she who has no great faults in his (her) character is nothing but a sausage. Well, so much the worse. I’m like that. Just as you say. A wretch and a liar. So much the worse for you and me and all my friends. Well, apart from that, I’ve been very much taken up with the work for my examinations. Everyone is at me to work; I have worked, though I always have the peculiar (senseless) feeling that people do not do it for me, but for some other reason. How can that be? That expresses my lack of belief in myself. And yet, don’t weep for me. I somehow believe in myself. My preparations are finished now, but I’ve the habit, I still want to work. But I want to be home, I mean America, on a visit and I think it will be good to be home. There are problems here and a sort of anxiety I never did solve. To be frank, I understood you in America and I do not think I understand you here. (That was my mind going downhill I suppose?) Meanwhile, if Fairfield comes and is allowed, I think I will go with her, Grandma thinks it a good idea, to the Wiesbaden Music Festival, there will be a good many people and all kinds of madmen for music. I have a friend going through Paris—and if you could put him up in my old room? Please. He hasn’t a penny. I myself will come back on my way home and see you.